(long) W1AW IARU HF

[N3ADL at aol.com]

It seems to me that some serious wool has been pulled here and after this
thread I could not help myself so please tolerate my tirade and I seek
opinions if you desire to give them. I have broad shoulders..Flame away
  Several years ago I became a guest op at W1AW for IARU after being
recruited by Alan N2KW, The ITU rep, and Rich K2WR. It didn't take long to
become hooked on the magical "W1AW" callsign pileups and Rich's NY Deli
Pastrami. The station engineers were most helpfull in keeping things going
and Chief Engineer Jeff,WA1MBK, was just a great asset as we fought the wars
with what Tom has said are "Broadcast" antenna's. My FRC training has
instilled a highly competitive attitude and quite frankly after examining the
results after a contest I didn't understand why we were consistantly down the
list in HQ summarys until I discovered that the game was not being played on
an even field. The other HQ stations are actually "professional" contest
stations with huge antenna farms for each band. In fact they sometimes have
several HQ stations on around their country with each station taking a
band/mode. If you doubt me try asking any HQ SSB station where his XXm CW
station is...He'll respond " I don't know" because it may be 500 miles away!
These stations are on the N2RM/W3LPL order! We had some very good operators
assembled..a multi club conglomeration of  K3IPK,KR2J,N1CC,WN3K,Murphy,
N2KW,K2WR,WB2DIN,K5NA,and his crew, along with most anyone else who showed up
to operate as long as we knew they were coming so as to not disturbe the
operating schedule of the assembled team and the station engineers duties. I
hate to lose at marbles, much less contesting, so I asked Alan why we could
not take the call sign to a big /MM station so as to be more competitive or
better yet spread the call over several stations as the europeans do. Alan
said K1ZZ would not permit the call sign to leave the station EVER for
anything other than FD or league conventions. Never a REAL contest. This was
not the answer I wanted to hear so I pushed every year to take the W1AW call
to a real contest station/s but was stone walled at every turn. Frustration
led to resignation and I was forced to accept the fact that we would never be
at the top of the results column. 
       This year Bob,WB2DIN, was in contact with Jeff,WA1MBK, in February/
March to set up this years event and things were going fairly smooth. Motel
reservations were made...Ops recruited..equipment obtained to support an all
out effort once again. Most of us were to bring our own equipment as W1AW is
severly lacking in modern contest essentials but we do the best we can with
what we have.
    Then, two weeks before the contest, we were told that there was a change
of plans and that K1ZZ had allowed K1KI to take the call off site and no
other operating positions were available. In short the door was slammed in
our faces. 
      As I suspected this years crew , a team of ARRL employees, did an
outstanding job with real contest antenna's and should move well up the HQ
standings but I feel the score should be disqualified as league members were
not permitted access to the HQ team and this was not "in the spirit" of the
contest. I won't hold my breath..BUT..There's something fishy going on
here.....      
        More to follow...73 de Doug//N3ADL


>From James White <0006492564 at mcimail.com>  Mon Jul 17 02:45:00 1995
From: James White <0006492564 at mcimail.com> (James White)
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 95 20:45 EST
Subject: Stubs-not really
Message-ID: <13950717014531/0006492564PK1EM at MCIMAIL.COM>

NOT!....don't totally rule out 40 as a day band - some very good rates can
be had there during domestic contests during the daylight hours, this past
Friday over pizza (!) Jeff, WC4E and I compared our Jan NAQP logs and Jeff
upon seeing my visits to 40 meters almost 2 hours before him (with many more
QSOs in that time frame :-) said shXX (or something along those
lines)..........especially with typical Field Day antennas like low dipoles
and the high angle radiation they yield, 40 is much more than a nightime
band! (check out Sweepstakes writeups in NCJ and see how many QSOs the big
guns have on 40....the expression "there's no meters like 40 meters" is well
deserved!)

                                  Jim, zx

...I hope to build some stubs this Summer as well - a great deal of info on
it has shown up here on the reflector, lemme know if you want me to forward
the older postings, I have been trying to save them.                        



>From Dave Pascoe <pascoe at mathworks.com>  Mon Jul 17 03:48:34 1995
From: Dave Pascoe <pascoe at mathworks.com> (Dave Pascoe)
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 22:48:34 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Blank pages in latest NCJ
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950716224642.18802A-100000 at zippy>

Did anyone else notice white (blank) pages in the latest NCJ.

I had several blank (missing) pages in my copy.

Seems like the beginning of a conspiracy or something.  :-)

-Dave KM3T